Pale Lights

[Thomas Cardew]

Pale Lights is the next web serial project from ErraticErrata, author of the popular Practical Guide to Evil web serial. We had a discussion thread for the end of the Guide but I haven’t seen one for Pale Lights yet. The first 29 chapters are out for the general public; roughly the same as the first book in the Guide, so this seems like a good time to start a discussion. Note that Patreon readers are ahead, as they get chapters 3 weeks in advance. Let’s try to keep the discussion to the public release to avoid spoilers for the non-Patreon readers.

What are people’s thoughts? Is anyone else reading this? Is anyone else enjoying it? The discussion on the serial page seems very muted. I’m sure part of that is due to splitting the audience between the Patreon and free readers but even the reddit seems much more muted. I think the slower release rate also kills a lot of momentum. While the chapters seem longer than those in the Guide, the once-a-week schedule is pretty brutal for generating longer discussion.

Some of my own thoughts to get the ball rolling: I love Tristan. His chapters are a delight and by far the more entertaining and interesting while I find Angharad’s almost tedious. I do not care about her at all or any of the nobles, beyond when Tristan will get his chance at revenge. Her best scenes so far have been the fight with the saint which just good action and the one with the Fisher. I think the choice to have two viewpoint characters hasn’t worked well so far. For one, we keep repeating events from different perspectives. This isn’t a great sign, one of the points of ‘back at the ranch’ storytelling is that you move on to the next interesting bit and move the clock forward. This feels more uneven, like we’re seesawing between the back to cover the same time periods instead of leapfrogging forward. The slower weekly schedule probably exacerbates this for me.

The worldbuilding is slow but interesting. It’s less immediately accessible than the Guide’s starting conceit of ‘fairy tales are real, stories are grooves in the world, and the world runs are Narrativium’. We suffer a bit from a lack of a true straight man but it’s hard to thread the needle between something like a Weber-esque info dump and the more gradual reveal of details. But it’s more interesting for that. The gods and monsters are delightfully monstrous and inhuman. The world is mysterious and unknown, but it's also harder to discuss right now. The ‘world runs on stories’ lends itself to more and easier speculations about where the story is going and what’s happening. In Vesper, we just don’t know enough about how the world works to start making those kind of guesses yet.

Who do people think the 6 shadowy characters are in the backdrop? Tristan, Angharad, Song, and Sarai seem obvious as four of them. Thoughts on the remaining 2? Yong, Lan, Cosme, Zenzele? Ferranda, Brun, Tupoc? One of the older or more sidelined characters?

Anyone care to make brash predictions or speculation? Who do people suspect for the two unsolved murders so far? Any predictions about the Machine or the Red Maw?

[tyckspoon]

I get huge Fallen London vibes from the setting information, which.. yeah, I'm down for that. Storywise, so far I'm not as invested as I was in Practical Guide; part of it is the duo protagonists and how that interacts with the pacing, I think, and part of it is because we're in the prologue of the story and there's already like 20 characters we're supposed to care about, and like a quarter of those don't have many distinguishing characteristics past 'fights good' (..and a lot of them are probably just there to die sooner or later anyways.) One of the great benefits Practical Guide got from explicitly running on tropes and story codes was that most of the notable characters were immediately memorable and distinct - being literally built on tropes does a lot of heavy lifting in fixing who this character is in your mind.

Which I think is part of why I also like Tristan's part of the story a lot more so far. He's gathered the misfits and left behinds and the people who are entirely unsuited to be in the environment they are.. which also means they're the people with the interesting stories, compared to the 'yeah I fight well/shoot well, of course I came to the trials that will probably involve applying violence to problems until the problems go away' contingent.

[Rynjin]

Pale Lights is pretty good but it could definitely benefit from having a single protagonist. Angharad is genuinely the mill around the story's neck at the moment. She has no interesting perspectives and is one of the characters whose defining characteristic is "fights good".

Tristan chapters feel like some of the best parts of The Black Company and other dark fantasy novels. He's conniving, but clearly has a heart of gold and the clear dissonance between his thoughts and actions is just *mwah*. Love characters who think they're bad people and overlook all the good they do.

I could read about Tristan sneaking around an dreading random documents and lore **** all day. This could be an action-less series and his chapters would likely still be compelling. he is just an inherently interesting person regardless of the situation.

Angharad chapters feel like getting an interlude from some random Good-aligned Named in PtGE who exists only to prove why Catherine's worldview is correct. She's born of a parasite class and is overall wishy-washy in her characterization. The cognitive dissonance this character has (preaching about honor while trying to fumble around loopholes and technicalities in her own self-imposed honor code) is not nearly as interesting.

Angharad's biggest contrast to Tristan is that she gets put in many interesting SITUATIONS and makes them less interesting by them being from her perspective.

Pacing...eh. I'm on that "wait until there's about 4 chapters to read at once" life at the moment. The story reads good at that pace TBH.

[halfeye]

I'm reading it, but depending on hiatuses I'm reading about 50 webserials. It's not the worst, but I don't think it's in my top ten.

[Dragonus45]

So my immense hatred for Practical Guide, it's characters, and everything it stands for hasn't stopped me from at least appreciated EE is a good writer and has improved immensely over the years on top of that. So Pale Lights is pretty great, I think a once a week drop is also the best overall choice and the chapters are long enough I don't feel cheated by it. The world and characters feel a lot more fully formed and whole in general and the outlining in particular has improved a lot. The characters are great. Angharad is both cool and feels like EE took some lessons from the latter half of PGtE on how to handle people being good and trying to uphold ideals without being miserable failures of human beings who utterly fail everyone and everything by not being pragmatic utilitarian number crunchers of death and misery. Tristan is just pure fun and needs a hug. Clockmaker lady who's name I am struggling with right now though is my dark horse favorite. Plus no Amadeus which is probably the best possible decision any story could ever make! I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[Rynjin]

Mentioning Vanesa reminds me of the other reason I like Tristan's chapters better: his supporting cast is massively superior. Everybody there is so interesting, with really unique skillsets and perspectives.

Angharad has...uhhh...yeah I've banked two or three chapters and I already can't remember a single CHARACTER TRAIT of anyone in her group, much less their name.

I would also really question your read on Angharad as a refutation of some of the more nihilistic parts of the Guide. PtGE has several Good characters to pull from later on that do a good job of justifying their own ideals in opposition to Catherine's; Hanno is best boy for example and up until the bitter end he never stops challenging Catherine that her methods of ruthless pragmatism are not inherently correct, they just happen to be ideally situated for a literal war of extinction. In any other era she would have been a detriment to society moving forward, and in a lot of ways she even comes to acknowledge that by the end.

Angharad, on the other hand, reads a lot like really early "Good" characters like the Lone Swordsman, but without the excuse of being brainwashed*. She's utterly convinced that she is moral, and therefore morality flows from her actions. Whatever she does to help herself is Good, and whatever she does to hurt others is Justified. Anything people to do work against her is Evil (or "Dishonorable"), and as mentioned I find her constant harping on about Honor while consistently scheming ways to break the spirit of her own words and betray the spirit of literally any agreement she makes to ends not intended by either party on agreement extremely tiresome.

*Well, Isabel is brainwashing her but this doesn't affect her morality.

As I said in the comments of at least one chapter, she reminds me of Trissiny from The Gods are Bastards, a Paladin who started off as a truly reprehensible individual (veering hard into being a Straw Feminist with the level of her misandry, and a healthy dose of Fantastic Racism to boot, to the point of actively trying to murder her classmate for being mixed race). Triss managed to SEVERELY redeem herself later on in the story, so I'm hoping a similar character arc is in the cards for Angharad since she's not in as low of a starting point as Triss was.

[Dragonus45]

Mentioning Vanesa reminds me of the other reason I like Tristan's chapters better: his supporting cast is massively superior. Everybody there is so interesting, with really unique skillsets and perspectives.

Angharad has...uhhh...yeah I've banked two or three chapters and I already can't remember a single CHARACTER TRAIT of anyone in her group, much less their name.

I can't do names to save my life but I have a decently clear picture of most of her party in my head. Tristan's are more interesting in general though I agree.

I would also really question your read on Angharad as a refutation of some of the more nihilistic parts of the Guide. PtGE has several Good characters to pull from later on that do a good job of justifying their own ideals in opposition to Catherine's; Hanno is best boy for example and up until the bitter end he never stops challenging Catherine that her methods of ruthless pragmatism are not inherently correct, they just happen to be ideally situated for a literal war of extinction. In any other era she would have been a detriment to society moving forward, and in a lot of ways she even comes to acknowledge that by the end.

Later on yea, that's why I mentioned lessons learned in the latter half, mainly post Drow Arc where the heroes stopped being framed as worse then the villains despite that particular narrative twist not even working when it leaned really hard into it. William was right. The idea she had to be a murderous monster adopted by Amadeus and molded in his image to be effective rings falsely the whole way through.

Angharad, on the other hand, reads a lot like really early "Good" characters like the Lone Swordsman, but without the excuse of being brainwashed*. She's utterly convinced that she is moral, and therefore morality flows from her actions. Whatever she does to help herself is Good, and whatever she does to hurt others is Justified. Anything people to do work against her is Evil (or "Dishonorable"), and as mentioned I find her constant harping on about Honor while consistently scheming ways to break the spirit of her own words and betray the spirit of literally any agreement she makes to ends not intended by either party on agreement extremely tiresome.

What? That read is so far off base the umpire called it out while looking at his smart phone. I'm not even sure where to start disagreeing with it at.

As I said in the comments of at least one chapter, she reminds me of Trissiny from The Gods are Bastards, a Paladin who started off as a truly reprehensible individual (veering hard into being a Straw Feminist with the level of her misandry, and a healthy dose of Fantastic Racism to boot, to the point of actively trying to murder her classmate for being mixed race). Triss managed to SEVERELY redeem herself later on in the story, so I'm hoping a similar character arc is in the cards for Angharad since she's not in as low of a starting point as Triss was.

Skipped Gods are Bastards thankfully, happy to see it was the right call.

[Rynjin]

TGAB is actually very good...from book 2 onward. Book 1 is ****ing awful, and only being INCREDIBLY bored allowed me to push through it.

What? That read is so far off base the umpire called it out while looking at his smart phone. I'm not even sure where to start disagreeing with it at.

My read comes from stuff in the book like "slavery is fine if my family does it and calls it something different but evil otherwise" and "peasants are literally livestock to me" but okay.

Ah sorry the second one is actually "Eww don't talk to me peasant (who I have to remind myself is by legal technicality a person)", my b.

It made her uncomfortable that people – commoners – would call out to her in such a way.

[Dragonus45]

TGAB is actually very good...from book 2 onward. Book 1 is ****ing awful, and only being INCREDIBLY bored allowed me to push through it.

I don't think I'll ever be that bored thankfully.

My read comes from stuff in the book like "slavery is fine if my family does it and calls it something different but evil otherwise" and "peasants are literally livestock to me" but okay.

So first off when did she ever say anything like "all peasants are livestock", a huge part of her issues with the nobles she deals with in the story is that they act like that and treat people under them like garbage which she considers immoral. And in one of her most recent chapter she literally said she though slavery was evil. Yes she isn't exactly the best person around, well relatively she's probably in the top quarter of the list given the other characters in the story if you grade on a curve, but she does at least have a real moral code she tries to stick too without being blind to the ways it could be used against her.

[Rynjin]

So first off when did she ever say anything like "all peasants are livestock", a huge part of her issues with the nobles she deals with in the story is that they act like that and treat people under them like garbage which she considers immoral.

Quotes like this:

It made her uncomfortable that people – commoners – would call out to her in such a way.

Are not uncommon. She clearly sees commoners as less than people.

And in one of her most recent chapter she literally said she though slavery was evil.

As for this, I think a character in the story says it best:

“The northern colonies,” she slowly said. “You are of the peoples below the Broken Gates.”

“Not so broken, before your people came,” Sarai coldly replied. “Like many other things.”

Angharad coughed into her hand, embarrassed. In truth she knew little of the Triglau, for her mother’s travels had been to the east and not the north, but she did know a few things. For one, Triglau was the name for the endless petty chiefdoms of that land as well as the people themselves. Unlike the people of Malan, they had never grown past their tribal roots.

“I apologize for the discourtesy,” Angharad awkwardly said. “I assure you, not all of the Isles believe slavery without evil.”

“Splendid news,” Sarai replied with a politely savage smile. “Why, near half the Malani I’ve ever met have assured me the same. No doubt the slave trade will be ending any day now.”

There was a long, barren stretch of silence. Then Tristan snorted out a laugh, which was shoddily turned into a cough.

“I’ve just seen to her wounds, Sarai, don’t murder her right afterwards,” he said. “It’s very inconsiderate of my time.”

"So what have you done about it?"

And the answer is...nothing. Because she doesn't actually give a ****. Her internal monologue is actually more about how she looks down on Sarai's people as primitive tribals rather than any hint of actual concern about slavery. It's just an automatic, empty response.

[Dragonus45]

Quotes like this:

It made her uncomfortable that people – commoners – would call out to her in such a way.

Are not uncommon. She clearly sees commoners as less than people.

There is an entire spectrum between, thinking of commoners as her lesser to a degree and considering chattel livestock.

As for this, I think a character in the story says it best:


"So what have you done about it?"

And the answer is...nothing. Because she doesn't actually give a ****. Her internal monologue is actually more about how she looks down on Sarai's people as primitive tribals rather than any hint of actual concern about slavery. It's just an automatic, empty response.

What, she is less then perfect and hasn't managed to upend her entire society by the age of 19? (Or however old she is I forget the exact number) And again there is a chasm big enough to fit a giant eye eating murder bird thing between her flaws of being a bit racist even if she doesn't support outright slavery and your take on her as thinking it's a perfectly acceptable part of her culture.

[Rynjin]

What, she is less then perfect and hasn't managed to upend her entire society by the age of 19? (Or however old she is I forget the exact number) And again there is a chasm big enough to fit a giant eye eating murder bird thing between her flaws of being a bit racist even if she doesn't support outright slavery and your take on her as thinking it's a perfectly acceptable part of her culture.

The gap is filled by the fact that we see her thoughts as well as her actions. She says on multiple occasions "Slavery is bad".

She never once thinks it, and is more concerned with her peoples' IMAGE than any of the actual awful things they put people through.

The things she's usually thinking is "this person is less than me" about every single other person in the cast for a completely different reason. "They're a commoner? Ew.", "This person doesn't fight as well as me? Cringe.", "This guy is struggling to survive because he wasn't handed everything on a silver platter like myself? Literal scum, go die."

[Dragonus45]

The gap is filled by the fact that we see her thoughts as well as her actions. She says on multiple occasions "Slavery is bad".

She never once thinks it, and is more concerned with her peoples' IMAGE than any of the actual awful things they put people through.

The things she's usually thinking is "this person is less than me" about every single other person in the cast for a completely different reason. "They're a commoner? Ew.", "This person doesn't fight as well as me? Cringe.", "This guy is struggling to survive because he wasn't handed everything on a silver platter like myself? Literal scum, go die."

Yea I don't see this as anything close to a productive conversation at this point.

[Thomas Cardew]

I get huge Fallen London vibes from the setting information, which.. yeah, I'm down for that. Storywise, so far I'm not as invested as I was in Practical Guide; part of it is the duo protagonists and how that interacts with the pacing, I think, and part of it is because we're in the prologue of the story and there's already like 20 characters we're supposed to care about, and like a quarter of those don't have many distinguishing characteristics past 'fights good' (..and a lot of them are probably just there to die sooner or later anyways.) One of the great benefits Practical Guide got from explicitly running on tropes and story codes was that most of the notable characters were immediately memorable and distinct - being literally built on tropes does a lot of heavy lifting in fixing who this character is in your mind.

The sheer number of people doesn’t help, but I really feel there’s tiers of people we’re expected to care about, everyone else is just set dressing. Tristan and Angharad as viewpoint characters; Yong, Sarai, and Song as main allies; Tupoc, Isabel, and Cozme as antagonists. Everyone else is just set dressing and padding. We aren’t even meant to care about the Cerdans given that they’re being written as cartoonishly evil, they’re being written as morally acceptable targets for Tristan. Everyone else is just sort interchangeable background characters that being introduced for future use.
Your point about the prologue is interesting. I wonder if eventually looking back, we’ll say the story should have started further down main plot. Prologues often come out later in publication despite being chronologically first. This lets them waste less time on establishing the known leads and more on the side characters. The guide was also slower in introducing additional important characters, at this point we’d only really seen Black, Akua, plus the tiniest bit of William. We’d introduced the war college cast, but the focus never came off Cat. Then in the next book it adds Thief, Apprentice, and Archer but it does so relatively slowly without taking the focus off Cat/William/Akua.

Angharad chapters feel like getting an interlude from some random Good-aligned Named in PtGE who exists only to prove why Catherine's worldview is correct. She's born of a parasite class and is overall wishy-washy in her characterization. The cognitive dissonance this character has (preaching about honor while trying to fumble around loopholes and technicalities in her own self-imposed honor code) is not nearly as interesting.
-SNIP-
Pacing...eh. I'm on that "wait until there's about 4 chapters to read at once" life at the moment. The story reads good at that pace TBH.

Angharad, on the other hand, reads a lot like really early "Good" characters like the Lone Swordsman, but without the excuse of being brainwashed*. She's utterly convinced that she is moral, and therefore morality flows from her actions. Whatever she does to help herself is Good, and whatever she does to hurt others is Justified. Anything people to do work against her is Evil (or "Dishonorable"), and as mentioned I find her constant harping on about Honor while consistently scheming ways to break the spirit of her own words and betray the spirit of literally any agreement she makes to ends not intended by either party on agreement extremely tiresome.

That’s a great description of how they feel. But I think that’s more a flaw of execution. She’s meant to honestly believe in the honor system morality of pre-modernity: Your honor is a thing which exists outside of yourself and is subject to complex system of rules. Which is just so completely foreign to the postmodern western mind. I expect her character growth is going to be from that pre-modern system to the post-modern.

Which gets to your second point, I don’t think it’s that she IS moral and morality flows from her actions. She’d simply kill Tupoc a dozen times over at this point if that was the case. She really is trying follow what appears to the modern audience as a nonsensical morality system. The problem is we read honor and think along the of ‘honesty, integrity, and fulfilling the spirit of the obligation’. While she says honor and means ‘rigid adherence to a set of societal rules by the letter of that law’. We are using the same word for two very different concepts… I think the conflict could be interesting but it’s just being handled too slowly and it's a side plot in her own chapters which are more focused on the current monsters and danger. The only time she’s really faced this contradiction head on was in the Fisher chapter. That has been her most interesting scene so far and not just because of the world-building.

All of which leads to the final issue of ‘parasitic class’ and slavery… which I don’t really have an interest in talking about, particularly not on this board. The second concept is just so dominated by modern American issues it’s pointless to try in general and particularly under the rules of this board.

[Dragonus45]

That’s a great description of how they feel. But I think that’s more a flaw of execution. She’s meant to honestly believe in the honor system morality of pre-modernity: Your honor is a thing which exists outside of yourself and is subject to complex system of rules. Which is just so completely foreign to the postmodern western mind. I expect her character growth is going to be from that pre-modern system to the post-modern.

Which gets to your second point, I don’t think it’s that she IS moral and morality flows from her actions. She’d simply kill Tupoc a dozen times over at this point if that was the case. She really is trying follow what appears to the modern audience as a nonsensical morality system. The problem is we read honor and think along the of ‘honesty, integrity, and fulfilling the spirit of the obligation’. While she says honor and means ‘rigid adherence to a set of societal rules by the letter of that law’. We are using the same word for two very different concepts… I think the conflict could be interesting but it’s just being handled too slowly and it's a side plot in her own chapters which are more focused on the current monsters and danger. The only time she’s really faced this contradiction head on was in the Fisher chapter. That has been her most interesting scene so far and not just because of the world-building.

Uhhhhh, the idea of an honor code is not as foreign to a modern day audience as that. Plenty of people could recognize and comprehend the idea without being born a few hundred years ago and that does still carry implications of honesty, integrity, and fulfilling the spirit of agreements just not in the silly fantastical get you betrayed and stabbed way such things tend to be portrayed. I deeply hope that doesn't turn out to be her character arc though, I was hoping EE was past that kind of lazy edginess.

[Rynjin]

Uhhhhh, the idea of an honor code is not as foreign to a modern day audience as that. Plenty of people could recognize and comprehend the idea without being born a few hundred years ago and that does still carry implications of honesty, integrity, and fulfilling the spirit of agreements just not in the silly fantastical get you betrayed and stabbed way such things tend to be portrayed. I deeply hope that doesn't turn out to be her character arc though, I was hoping EE was past that kind of lazy edginess.

The problem is that Angharad is honest to a degree, but does not have integrity and CERTAINLY does not fulfill the spirit of agreements.

She trends toward Lawful Evil quite often in her interpretation of agreements she made. The funny thing is, the way she goes about it IS how you get betrayed and stabbed. People not bound by your tortured honor code are not going to look at you twisting your word and going out of your way to wriggle out of the spirit of any agreement you make and say "oh fair enough she did not violate the Exact Words so we're good" they're actually going to go "Okay this person is a duplicitous scumbag and I should get them before they get me".

She's been like one step off of going "Well actually I had my fingers crossed when I made that agreement so it doesn't count" since pretty early on.

[tyckspoon]

Your point about the prologue is interesting. I wonder if eventually looking back, weÂ’ll say the story should have started further down main plot. Prologues often come out later in publication despite being chronologically first. This lets them waste less time on establishing the known leads and more on the side characters. The guide was also slower in introducing additional important characters, at this point weÂ’d only really seen Black, Akua, plus the tiniest bit of William. WeÂ’d introduced the war college cast, but the focus never came off Cat. Then in the next book it adds Thief, Apprentice, and Archer but it does so relatively slowly without taking the focus off Cat/William/Akua.

I do find it kind of annoying that Angharad is almost certainly going to be much more plot-relevant character and focus, since her thing with the Fisher King kind of goes right to the heart of the central premise (the Old Powers are working to break back out and take the world back from humanity, the Watch is trying to prevent this and ultimately failing) while Tristan's current motivation is basically just providing a reason for him to be in the same area as Angharad. Annoying because I want to see more of Tristan and don't particularly care for Angharad or her main character struggle that you can see coming ten mile away ('Will she break her honor, or will her honor break her.') .. but perfectly aware and can admit that's just because I like Tristan's character archetype more.

ThatÂ’s a great description of how they feel. But I think thatÂ’s more a flaw of execution. SheÂ’s meant to honestly believe in the honor system morality of pre-modernity: Your honor is a thing which exists outside of yourself and is subject to complex system of rules. Which is just so completely foreign to the postmodern western mind. I expect her character growth is going to be from that pre-modern system to the post-modern.

While Angharad's sense of what nobility is and requires is clearly positioned as better than the Sacromonte version where they operate on the "He who has the gold.." version of the Golden Rule... I think a big part of what kind of puts people on edge with it is you get the feeling that she has the same regard for commoners and servants as she would for a horse, dog, or good pair of boots. All of those provide good and effective service to you to the best of their abilities, so in return you owe it to them to take care of them to the best of your ability. It's wrong to beat your horse, but your horse doesn't have "rights", your sword doesn't get to speak to you as if you were equals, your hunting dogs aren't your friends. There's not a sense of a regard for innate human dignity or value, just the cultural value that you should not abuse those things that are lesser than you simply because you are in a position of power over them.

[Thomas Cardew]

Uhhhhh, the idea of an honor code is not as foreign to a modern day audience as that. Plenty of people could recognize and comprehend the idea without being born a few hundred years ago and that does still carry implications of honesty, integrity, and fulfilling the spirit of agreements just not in the silly fantastical get you betrayed and stabbed way such things tend to be portrayed. I deeply hope that doesn't turn out to be her character arc though, I was hoping EE was past that kind of lazy edginess.

I’m expressing it poorly. It’s not that people can’t comprehend, but the difference between comprehending and understanding. A better analogy might be the difference between ‘face’ in a lot of Asian cultures and reputation in Western ones in the real world. Or something like ‘Guest Right’ in Game of Thrones. Sure we get the base concept of hospitality, but we don’t have the same societal aversion and horror that people who actually believe in that concept would have. Or the difference between how we view Achilles behavior in the Iliad and how the ancient Greeks would.

The funny thing is, the way she goes about it IS how you get betrayed and stabbed. People not bound by your tortured honor code are not going to look at you twisting your word and going out of your way to wriggle out of the spirit of any agreement you make and say "oh fair enough she did not violate the Exact Words so we're good" they're actually going to go "Okay this person is a duplicitous scumbag and I should get them before they get me".

See this what I mean, this is the modern reaction. The pre-modern is Angharad's reaction: Everyone in her society IS bound to the honor code. It is the rules her society runs on and she is acting in accordance with those rules. ‘This person is a duplicitous scumbag and I should get them before they get me’ isn’t enough. They have to have broken the rules before she can act, she’s as constrained by the rules as they are.

I’m actually curious to see more of Malani society. It will be interesting to see if she’s uniquely out of touch or not. I’m kind of curious if they’re ruled by an actual god-Queen or not. There’s been enough comments about the High Queen not dying, all honor flowing to and from her, that’s hard to tell. It could just be standard Royalty BS, but it’s also fantasy… the High Queen very well could be a ruling spirit who shaped Malani society and notions of honor to feed itself.

I do find it kind of annoying that Angharad is almost certainly going to be much more plot-relevant character and focus, since her thing with the Fisher King kind of goes right to the heart of the central premise (the Old Powers are working to break back out and take the world back from humanity, the Watch is trying to prevent this and ultimately failing) while Tristan's current motivation is basically just providing a reason for him to be in the same area as Angharad. Annoying because I want to see more of Tristan and don't particularly care for Angharad or her main character struggle that you can see coming ten mile away ('Will she break her honor, or will her honor break her.') .. but perfectly aware and can admit that's just because I like Tristan's character archetype more.

I almost completely agree with this. My only contention I have is that Tristan is probably still plot relevant. He’s clearly been groomed by Abuella specifically for the coming challenges. He’s going to have the skills to solve the problems Angharad’s stuff is going to reveal/cause. His motivation is to get him to join the Watch and to the school they’re all going to at the end. Angharad doesn’t have anything to do with it currently. So far you could do the entire book without Angharad and his story would be essentially the same. In fact, it would be improved from my perspective. That will actually be interesting to see, a lot of multibook series like this is going to be do staggered entries for main characters/perspectives. I wonder if looking back we'll see that the first book would have been better if it was mostly written from just Tristan's POV.

While Angharad's sense of what nobility is and requires is clearly positioned as better than the Sacromonte version where they operate on the "He who has the gold.." version of the Golden Rule... I think a big part of what kind of puts people on edge with it is you get the feeling that she has the same regard for commoners and servants as she would for a horse, dog, or good pair of boots. All of those provide good and effective service to you to the best of their abilities, so in return you owe it to them to take care of them to the best of your ability. It's wrong to beat your horse, but your horse doesn't have "rights", your sword doesn't get to speak to you as if you were equals, your hunting dogs aren't your friends. There's not a sense of a regard for innate human dignity or value, just the cultural value that you should not abuse those things that are lesser than you simply because you are in a position of power over them.

I do not think that’s quite right. I can see how it can come off that way, and it’s part of what I mean by a flaw of execution. In her own thoughts:
“All men had a trade, a vocation under the Sleeping God, and to be born a noble was to learn the trade of leadership, the burden of command. To then let your own go hungry was a fundamental failure of that duty.”

It’s not just that you shouldn’t ‘abuse those things that are lesser than you simply because you are in a position of power over them’, it’s that you have an active responsibility to care for them. That crime is also a failure of the lord for failing to provide enough opportunity for honest employment as it is for the criminal. That you have to be first in the attack and last in retreat. Because the system demands as much as it gives, that her privileges have corresponding duties.

Which gets to something almost said earlier: nobility isn’t an inherently parasitic class. That’s the failure mode, one where it commonly ends up because of entropy, human nature, and poor system design. Noblesse oblige sounds bad until doesn’t exist anymore. Then you just get parasites.

None of this is to be construed as support for any kind of aristocratic system. I’m personally very happy to live in a liberal republican system, and I encourage others to reform their systems as liberal republican systems because I think it would be better for them. But I had to live in a system with nobles, I’d much rather they at least hold Angharad’s sense of honor.

[Rynjin]

See this what I mean, this is the modern reaction. The pre-modern is Angharad's reaction: Everyone in her society IS bound to the honor code. It is the rules her society runs on and she is acting in accordance with those rules. ‘This person is a duplicitous scumbag and I should get them before they get me’ isn’t enough. They have to have broken the rules before she can act, she’s as constrained by the rules as they are.

This would be a valid argument if even Angharad herself didn't acknowledge that following just the letter of your honor and not the spirit is a good way to make your honor worthless...she just proceeded to continue to do it for a while because it was more convenient to do so.

[J-H]

I missed that this has started. Would someone mind a short low-spoiler summary of what it's about?

[Rynjin]

I missed that this has started. Would someone mind a short low-spoiler summary of what it's about?

In the far future everybody lives underground and/or the sun is dead (?), Ace Thief and Lesbian Swordfighter team up to fight crime kinda go their own separate paths and occasionally interact while they take this test to join the elite super-army. Also you can make contracts with gods to get superpowers.

[Thomas Cardew]

This would be a valid argument if even Angharad herself didn't acknowledge that following just the letter of your honor and not the spirit is a good way to make your honor worthless...she just proceeded to continue to do it for a while because it was more convenient to do so.

What she acknowledges is that you don't have to deal in blind good faith with those who are obviously not dealing in good faith with you. In the paraphrased words of Moist Von Lipwig 'You can't fool an honest man. Fortunately he'd never met one.' Remund and Cozme are transparently obvious in how they were trying to maneuver her (they'd have to be for her to recognize it ...) and she plays them in turn. Or she puts it: "Honour had been used against her, but that did not mean honour was wrong. Only that the wicked had been cleverer than she." The lesson she learned from the song '“That cleverness is a sword with two edges,” Angharad Tredegar replied. “And every so often, we get everything that we deserve.”She's the being lawful, just not lawful stupid.

[Rynjin]

The issue is the hypocrisy. I think she's taking the correct actions, but even she acknowledges what she's doing is against the spirit of her honor code. But instead of learning from that she doubles down "No the honor code I have isn't stupid, it's just that in order to avoid getting outplayed I have to really go out of my way to do everything short of actively breaking it!"

It's extremely silly. If your honor can be discarded for convenience, in spirit if not in letter, then it's meaningless.

[Thomas Cardew]

In the far future everybody lives underground and/or the sun is dead (?), Ace Thief and Lesbian Swordfighter team up to fight crime kinda go their own separate paths and occasionally interact while they take this test to join the elite super-army. Also you can make contracts with gods to get superpowers.

Never setting sun is cranked up to 12, so nothing can live on the surface. Tech level is Black Powder and Sail plus magic. Clocks are thing but it's not really steampunk so far. Everything runs on the wonders and lost knowledge of the ancients. Spirits and monsters are everywhere and want to eat you. Others want cut deals with you to live vicariously through you. Major plots details have yet to be revealed.

[Thomas Cardew]

The issue is the hypocrisy. I think she's taking the correct actions, but even she acknowledges what she's doing is against the spirit of her honor code. But instead of learning from that she doubles down "No the honor code I have isn't stupid, it's just that in order to avoid getting outplayed I have to really go out of my way to do everything short of actively breaking it!"

It's extremely silly. If your honor can be discarded for convenience, in spirit if not in letter, then it's meaningless.

Actually, I'm not sure she acknowledges that it goes against the spirit. The closest I can find is this bit " That was the ugly truth of the words exact, the one her father had made sure to teach her: if you cleaved only to the letter of honour, honour had a way of ending up being what was most advantageous to you. No matter how callous or cruel." But in context that's not about how twisting words goes against the spirit of honor, but about how selfishness and human nature can make you twist honor so it only benefits you.

She isn't discarding her honor, she's putting a great deal of effort into threading the needle to able to successfully follow it. And it isn't meaningless because she has to thread that needle, she has to be precise with her wordings, to carve herself a space to act because if she did not... honor would prevent her from acting. None of this is to say that you shouldn't find her silly or hypocritical, because that's my whole point, from the modern perspective it is both. From her pre-modern perspective, she's following the rules.

[Alandra]

The issue is the hypocrisy. I think she's taking the correct actions, but even she acknowledges what she's doing is against the spirit of her honor code. But instead of learning from that she doubles down "No the honor code I have isn't stupid, it's just that in order to avoid getting outplayed I have to really go out of my way to do everything short of actively breaking it!"

It's extremely silly. If your honor can be discarded for convenience, in spirit if not in letter, then it's meaningless.

The way I understand it, the Malani honor code is essentially a matter of law and if you break the letter of the law you are punished. (It is mentioned in one chapter that anybody who breaks the honor code is ostracized by all other Malani and usually distrusted by anybody who notices that.)
So Angharad treats her promises like legal contracts and argues like a lawyer. She is required to follow the letter of the law, no matter what the other side does. But she is not required to play fair or follow the spirit of the agreement. So she doesn't see a problem with breaking the spirit of her agreement if the other side breaks it first, just like most people wouldn't.
Whether she follows the spirit of the agreement (or any other part of her honor) is the only part that Angharad treats as a moral choice, because this is the only part where she actually has a choice. So we get a lot of scenes where Angharad argues why she doesn't feel beholden to a promise she made (like staying away from Isabel) where she also argues what loophole allows her to essentially break the promise without facing the dire consequences of breaking the letter of it.